


Here It Goes Again

by Reiya



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Affectionate Insults, Banter, Everyone's an asshole but they love each other really, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Hijinks & Shenanigans, Humor, Nothing bad happens here, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Team Dynamics, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-12
Updated: 2014-07-12
Packaged: 2018-02-08 13:19:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1942641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Reiya/pseuds/Reiya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Steve, Bucky and Natasha get into the most ridiculous competition ever, pride is wounded, friendships are called into question and Sam is, as usual, the only sane man.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Here It Goes Again

It all starts, as most ridiculous, regrettable and potentially life threatening things do in Avengers Tower, with a completely innocent statement. 

It's a testament to how strange Sam's life has become that he finds himself flipping pancakes at eight in the morning in the kitchen of arguably one of the most famous towers in the world while Captain America, Black Widow and The Winter Soldier bicker like children at the breakfast bar behind him. 

The strangest thing is that it isn't even an anomaly, it's a regular occurrence. So much so that he automatically tunes out the racket the overgrown children behind him are making and concentrates on flipping as many pancakes as possible in as little time as he can. Steve eats his weight in food at every mealtime, Bucky's not far behind and vodka's not the only thing Natasha can put away with impressive speed. 

None of their childhoods had really lent themselves to producing any great chefs (Natasha had once commented that she could kill a man with a frying pan but that didn't mean she could cook with one) so Sam, the only one of the group who was actually decent in the kitchen, had taken over breakfast duty in the hopes of producing food that was at least partly edible and not burnt to a crisp. Which had led to him being here now, relegated to the stove where he was forced to keep up with super soldier appetites while his friends bickered behind him. 

"All I'm saying, " he could hear Steve exclaim loudly, " Is that there was no reason for you to backflip off a building to avoid those bullets. You could have just ducked Bucky. In fact, that guy's aim was so off you probably could have just stood there and he would still have missed you. Wanting to show off is no reason to..." 

"Show off?" Bucky scoffed, elbowing Steve in the ribs and swiping his toast in the process. "Says the guy who prances around decked in the stars and stripes, bouncing the world's most ostentatious shield off the walls like a goddamn frisbee." 

He jabbed at Steve indignantly with the toast, looking mildly offended and extremely amused. 

"And don't pretend you're innocent in all this Rodgers." Natasha interjected, plucking the toast out of Bucky's hand while he was still waving it at Steve. 

"I saw you fighting that Hydra agent last week. Don't even try and pretend that little acrobatics display was necessary, you could have taken him down with one punch. But instead you perform one of the most advanced take down moves taught at SHIELD just because he basically dared you to do your worst. I mean, martial arts are fun and all but..."

"Says the woman who killed a man with her thighs last mission" Steve made a valiant grab for his stolen toast but missed and Natasha shoved it into her mouth in triumph. 

Sam just sighed as he piled a monstrous stack of pancakes onto a plate and brought it over to the table. This argument had been going on for days, ever since Tony had jokingly asked if Natasha was trying to fight or win gold for Mother Russia after she had executed one of her more impressive and athletic fight moves to disable the latest villain-of-the-week. Bucky had snorted which had prompted Natasha to round on him, glaring menacingly, and let loose a torrent of rapid fire Russian. Although Sam couldn't catch all the words she was throwing in Bucky's direction he was pretty sure 'fighting like a dancing monkey' made it in there along with an impressive array of Russian insults and swearing. 

Steve had jumped in with stilted but understandable Russian (Natasha and Bucky had been teaching both Steve and Sam the language in their down time but Steve's super soldier brain was having a much easier time picking up it up than Sam's totally normal, human one). By the time they had switched back to English the argument had dissolved into thinly veiled insults about the various fighting styles they each employed, interspersed with a healthy mix of jabs at the unnecessarily fancy moves that all descended into during times of great boredom or dire provoking. 

Which led to them right back to here, with Sam plonking an enormous plate of pancakes in front of the bickering national heroes and grouching. 

"Y'know, I can see right through all of you. You can insult each other's techniques all you want but what this basically boils down to is 'my fight moves are better than your fight moves' and we all know you've secretly been trying to one up each other for weeks."

Sam had been watching his teammates, his friends, fighting styles for a little over a year now, ever since they had brought Bucky home and set up residence in the tower. 

Natasha had always been incredibly graceful, poised like a snake about to strike, all coiled strength and deadly precision. Steve on the other hand was much more traditional, fighting stance set and strong, shield raised. But occasionally he would throw in one of the fancy foreign martial arts moves he had been training himself in, changing instantly from the broad, all-american hero to a twisting force of nature clad in red, white and blue.

Bucky was...well, Bucky was something else. Absolutely lethal, a weapon honed with the utmost precision and care. His fighting was almost like dancing in its elegance, if dancing usually ended with a knife embedded in one of the partner's throats. 

But for all their skill and deadly grace, neither Steve, Bucky nor Natasha were over thirty and their youth manifested in amusing, if slightly alarming ways. Such as this, squabbling over pancakes and trying to outdo each other with fancy fight moves while ribbing each other about it in the process. It made Sam grin even as he was trying to sound serious. 

All three of them looked slightly chastened at Sam's statement and he grinned triumphantly. 

"And I mean, there's no need to try to outdo each other anyway, it's not like it's a competition or anything."

He realises his mistake the moment he sees the glint in Natasha's eyes but it's already too late. By the next morning, a scoreboard has appeared pinned to the fridge, reading:

Steve - 0  
Nat - 0  
Bucky - 0

It all goes downhill from there. 

 

The four of them are sent the next week to take down one of the splinter cells of Hydra that had sprung up since the Helicarrier Incident (as it had come to be known around the tower). The bases were mostly poorly organised and scattered so it had been generally agreed not to bother sending all of the Avengers to deal with them. 

Steve, and Bucky as soon as he had been deemed sane and field ready, were a given on the team as their personal vendetta against Hydra was well known in the tower. Sam insisted on coming with them to 'stop them getting their dumb asses blown to hell and back' as he liked to put it, after witnessing some of Steve's vicious, bordering on suicidal, raids of previous bases back when Bucky was on the run and Hydra was still a very real threat. Natasha began to tag along, claiming the tower was boring, the world not in danger enough and Steve's ass in spandex too great a sight to miss. 

All in all, it had become a sort of team bonding activity, taking out bases and making fun of each other over the comms as they did so. 

The base they were currently reducing to rubble was decrepit and poorly defended, just a handful of black clad guards with ordinary guns. It's laughably easy which Sam knows is a bad sign because this is when his crazy friends start to employ some of their more creative tactics for fighting and espionage. 

Steve performs a complicated double kick that takes out two guards at once before spinning and nailing another in the face with his shield. Bucky shoots two without looking while knocking a third off the roof with an impressive high kick to the chest. 

Sam eyes him from where he's doing perimeter sweeps on his new, stark-made wings and can swear Bucky gives Steve a wink and a thumbs up. 

They both clear out of there pretty quickly after a shouted word from Natasha over the comms, which means they have a perfect view of her double somersault off the roof of the building just as it begins to crumble, flames licking out of the windows, as the explosives she rigged begin to detonate. She lands with textbook perfection and jogs over to them, only slightly singed. 

All three of them turn to look expectantly at Sam who sighs and points at Natasha. She smirks at the other two in triumph. Sam has to hand it to her, the flip off the roof, outlined by the explosion had looked pretty cool but he's not sure if risking getting blown up was worth the trouble. 

The next day the score board reads: 

Steve - 0  
Nat - 1  
Bucky - 0

Nat has a smug look on her face for the rest of the week. Sam hopes they'll forget about their little 'who can pull off the coolest move' competition by next mission. 

They don't. 

 

The next mission is a little different, they are sent out on intel from Fury and his underground network to neutralise the evil lair of a mad scientist who's just a little too interested in the Super Soldier Serum coursing through Steve and Bucky's veins. Sam wonders how this became his life. 

Natasha garrottes a man with the wire clamped between her hands before flipping over his head and taking out another using a move that makes even Sam wince in sympathy. Steve bounces his shield off at least three of the four walls, systematically knocking out a considerable number of the remaining guards in the process. He catches his shield one handed and turns to Natasha with a smug smile on his face. 

They both whip round at the sound of shattering glass, tense and already moving into fighting stances, only to see a guard who was lining up a shot at Steve unnoticed from behind a computer bank falling to the floor with a bullet hole neat and perfectly centred in his forehead. 

Sam sighs, hiding his smile and staring out of the shattered window to where he knows Bucky is positioned in a tree near the perimeter, ensuring neither the scientist or any of his hired goons makes a run for it. Thunder is crashing and the rain is pelting down, yet somehow Sam can swear he can see Bucky's smug grin from here. Here being an impressive distance from where Bucky is supposed to be stationed. 

When they meet up again in the Quinjet Bucky is shaking his wet hair out like a dog and grinning expectantly at Sam. Sam gives him an exaggerated eye roll and nods, ignoring the glares Steve and Natasha are sending his way. 

The next morning he wanders into the kitchen to see the scoreboard has been updated:

Steve - 0  
Nat - 1  
Bucky - 1

Next to Steve's name in Bucky's untidy scrawl is written,

'Getting slow old man'. 

Sam regrets ever becoming friends with any of them. 

 

A few days later Steve jumps from a plane without a parachute, executing a perfect landing into the sea behind the house they're supposed to infiltrating before shimmying his way up the jagged cliff face between him and his target with inhuman speed and grace. By the time the rest of the team get there he's surrounded by a pile of unconscious bodies and looking very pleased with himself. 

The scoreboard evens out and the game is on. 

 

Bucky storms several more Hydra bases like the avenging angel he is, using a combination of his instinctive knowledge of their layout and deadly hand to hand skills to rack up a considerable amount of points on the scoreboard. 

Natasha fights with increasing complexity and some well placed Widow's Bites but her real scores come from the missions where the more subtle spying is taking place. Steve is far too full frontal to be a decent spy and Bucky prefers a long range sniper rifle to true espionage. Natasha however acts like she was born for this, one night charming three crooked politicians out of vital information in the time it takes for Sam to use the bathroom. None of the men know what's hit them and are in handcuffs before the evening's up. Sam gives her double points for that one. 

Steve uses his shield like the world's most deadly frisbee, with skill and precision that makes even Sam a little terrified of him. He looks on in awe as Steve methodically wipes several unsavoury locations linked to Hydra off the map almost single handedly, using only a large metal disk. Bucky and Natasha don't even get a look in and grumble about it for days after as Steve's score beings to creep higher than theirs. 

At least, Sam thinks, it can't get any worse than this. 

 

The next time Steve tries to use one of his ridiculously effective shield throws, Bucky drops in from nowhere and flips over the shield, catching it in mid air and using it to flatten the guards Steve was aiming for himself. Grinning, he then tosses it back to Steve, who's staring daggers at his friend, before ducking low and throwing himself back into the fight. Bucky wins the point for that one and Steve scowls at him from behind his sketchbook for three days straight, looking at Bucky like he's plotting some dire retribution. 

The next time Bucky takes a shot at a Hydra guard Steve throws his shield in a perfectly calculated arc, knocking Bucky's bullet off it's intended path and into a different guard while Steve takes down the original one himself. He looks incredibly pleased with himself right up until the moment he realises the guard he hit with Bucky's bullet was the one Natasha was aiming for and she is now empty handed and looking at him with murder in her eyes. Steve gulps. Natasha smiles. 

The highlights of Sam's next few weeks include:

\- Natasha hijacking Steve's shield to use it as a glorified springboard while he was in mid fight, executing one of the most impressive mid air kicks Sam has ever seen.

\- Bucky using his metal arm rip a door Natasha had been trying to hack off its hinges and proceeding to walk past her and the now useless control panel into the previously secure room.

\- Steve ricochetting his shield down the length of an entire corridor that had been deemed too dangerous to fight through, knocking out the multitude of guards waiting there and strolling leisurely down its length towards the control room as Natasha and Bucky scowl at him from the extremely cramped vents they were crawling through. 

\- Natasha dropping in from the ceiling just as Bucky was about to finish off the most recent villain, landing on said villain's shoulders with deadly precision. The poor guy didn't stand a chance and Natasha strolled away from his unconscious body looking satisfied while Bucky glared at her from behind. 

\- Steve 'borrowing' one of Bucky's throwing knives in the middle of a fight and using it to hit the agent trying to sneak up on Bucky's six square on. The look on Bucky's face when he realised Steve had managed to steal his knife without Bucky noticing was so priceless Sam wished he had brought a camera. 

It took three more weeks of watching his friends pull off the most ridiculous stunts known to man before Sam finally decided that, amusing as this all was, enough was enough. 

"You three," he declared the next morning, brandishing the pancake covered spatula threateningly in their direction. "You three are getting ridiculous. Yes you're all very good at overly complicated fight moves and prancing round like stars from Hollywood action movies but I for one refuse to be held responsible when this all inevitably ends in tears."

The likelihood of the competition actually ending in tears was extremely low considering Sam was pretty sure two of the three idiots currently staring at him had had their tear ducts surgically removed to maintain their imitating and deadly assassin reputations and to avoid the rest of the world finding out they were actually huge softies. Grievous bodily harm was far more likely to be the inevitable end to their competition but his point still stood. 

Steve, Bucky and Natasha were looking a little guilty, if slightly amused that Sam was threatening them with a blunt instrument that was currently dripping pancake batter onto the floor. 

Sam withdrew his arm immediately but continued to fix his friends with his best 'I am disappointed in you all' face, trying not to grin at their expressions. 

"So today we are going to go down to the training room, you are all going to get everything out of your systems in whatever way you need to and then I won't have to worry like a concerned mother every time I try and take you anywhere."

The three people at the counter loudly voiced their consent and enthusiasm for the idea and Sam grinned before turning back to the pancake mix. His own revenge was long overdue anyway. 

Later that day Sam uploads a video to his YouTube account that instantly goes viral and becomes by far the most popular thing he has ever posted. The video consists of what looks like the world's most intense game of ultimate frisbee, with the famous star spangled shield ricocheting violently off the walls of a cramped training room while Captain America, Black Widow and The Winter Solider flip and duck wildly around it. They're using a combination of insane skill and pure luck to avoid having their heads taken off by the shield or each other and employing the most impressive use of multilingual profanity Sam has heard in a long time. 

They all look decidedly unheroic and a little ridiculous and Sam sits back and grins at his victory.

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to my wonderful beta arxialiria for putting up with me as I wrote this and also for indulging my continuing obsession over CA:TWS and all things Marvel. Dragging someone down with me has never been more fun.


End file.
